Gido/Guideau is so relatable,
I too am an impatient genderless menace who bites things they shouldn’t and hates unnecessarily/indirect social interaction.
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The Witch and The Beast Episode 1: The Witch and The City of Blazing Red
I'll be brutally honest: this is still a Yokohama production. Hamana brings some good work with their helming of the production, but there's still struggles. But in spite of those struggles I can't help but love this episode, and I can't help but want to talk about it. So let's talk about it.
First of all- the negatives. Characters are off model as often as they are on model, the animation is rather sparse and there's some awkward sequences throughout the episode. Some designs end up a little too simple for my tastes due to limitations with animation, and Hamana's storyboards and sense of direction do not mesh very well at all with this episode.
In spite of all of that there's still a mountain of work that I can only describe as incredible within.
For one, the environment art and art direction was superb. I was worried about how flat the colors were in the PVs, but this episode proved they're able to deliver a great deal of range on incredible environments that mesh 2D and 3D almost effortlessly. A Sign of Affection by and far has the best backgrounds in this season, but personally I'd put The Witch and The Beast as a reasonable second place (with Ishura hot on its tail).
The backgrounds in The Witch and The Beast really bring out the most in terms of style and color, really embodying Satake's modus operandi with them: very strong and full color palettes that hinge around a color or combination. It has me incredibly excited to see how they tackle other sequences in this season.
But that's about the only aspect in this episode that deserves its universal praise (aside from the OST, which is great) , the rest tend to come with a caveat. Like Hamana's boards.
I did sort of tear them apart earlier, but I'll come completely clean: there's still some really great layouts in this episode. They're not god tier and they miss out on the potential with symbolism and whatnot, but they're still damn good pieces that help sell the episode to viewers.
And then there's the animation. Hamana's boards don't really give much opportunity to effectively animate, but there's some sequences that really stand out.
Take, for example, Gideau eating. Sure, it might be a simple and short sequence but the fact that it was animated as well it was speaks volumes to the level of work that can appear with this series.
Similarly, there's this clip of a rotoscoped Gideau winding up a punch for Ione. It might be a little awkward, but the idea and execution of the rotoscoped sequence was really cool to see.
And there's a handful of other moments that express the surprisingly ability of Yokohama's animation for this series. Unfortunately we don't get much animation in Gideau's fight, but I'm hoping that we'll see better work done under more creative and involved storyboards we move along with this story.
It's overall a very middle of the road production with this first episode for sure, but I think that the bad parts are rather mild, while the good parts are quite inspiring. So rather than feeling concern or reservation with this adaptation, I oddly enough find myself excitedly waiting to see what Yokohama manages with the next episode!
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I made a tiny Ashgan/“the demon sword” from the witch and the beast!
I was gifted a 3d pen forever ago and forgot about it bc I didn’t have the patience or skill to use it at the time but I finally came back to it, and he turned out better than expected! I’ll probably sand some and add paint at some point but for now he is gonna stay like this.
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